Against SMART goals

Our desires will change

Love notes from Siel is a weekly newsletter from Siel, who used to live in Los Angeles but is currently traveling around. If you love the notes, subscribe for free.

Dear friend —

‘Tis the season for new resolutions — a weird season for me, since as a former setter of rigid and difficult goals, I now have a knee-jerk reaction against pursuing anything seriously.  

Overall, my floatier goalless way of living in recent years has made me happier, though I have to admit life sometimes feels unmoored, purposeless. I mean — If I have nothing to work towards, what do I even do with my days?

I suppose that’s the reason we come up with resolutions — to keep ourselves focused and busy and thus able to avoid existential questions that make us worry life may ultimately have no real purpose or meaning.  

Does that sound dark? I hope not. Meaningful or meaningless, it’s still fun to be alive. And I don’t feel purposeless all the time because while I no longer set resolutions, I do set down a handful of intentions each year. 

The difference between resolutions and intentions may seem like one of semantics, but there are key distinctions. For one, my intentions aren’t S.M.A.R.T. In fact, they’re deliberately non-specific and pretty much impossible to measure. Why? If you set rigid conditions by which you’re measuring your success, chances of failure go up. On the other hand, if you leave things vague and loose, you don’t have to do a whole lot to be able to say you’ve fulfilled said intentions.

I set five intentions in 2022. The first was to learn to speak Spanish better. This meant all I really had to do was learn a new word or two — or just learn to pronounce a word or two I already knew a little better — in order to say I’d fulfilled that intention. And fulfill it I did! I now speak at a B1 level, and I got there without stressing myself out too much about it. 

The second was to nurture my relationships. Again — very vague, thus very doable! And I do feel markedly closer to the people I love today than I did a year ago.

The other three intentions — to take some videos of myself dancing for memory-keeping purposes, to finish a draft of my novel, and to get a freelance career going — were more specific. But the videos could just be quick phone recordings, the draft didn’t need to be polished, and the freelance career didn’t need to be a particularly successful one. All three I can say have been fulfilled. 

The strange thing is, what I “accomplished” this year with my loosey goosey intentions is probably about what I would have accomplished had I been rigid, harsh, and anal-retentive — and thus less happy — about the whole thing. When I was younger I thought I needed to be hard on and strict with myself to get myself to do stuff. Turns out though, stuff just gets done as one lives on — no angst, guilt, or shame necessary.

And cool stuff I didn’t even set intentions for just happened by themselves, too. I set no travel goals but made it to 11 different countries last year — not counting Panama and Germany, which I stopped in but didn’t really get to explore. I had no plans to become a better dancer but I’ve improved at bachata just by going out dancing when I wanted to go out dancing. I set no reading goal but I ended up reading 105 books simply because when I wanted to read, I did so. And I had no goal to find a home but I’ve managed to establish a base of sorts in Mexico City, where, all told, I spent seven months of 2022 because I followed the urge to keep returning to the place.

Last year had its ups and downs for sure, but all in all, 2022 was a good time for me. Which is to say: Happiness seems to consist largely of learning to accept and enjoy whatever happens instead of trying so hard to make happen things we believe will bring happiness.

Basically, it’s taken me a while to learn that life is more enjoyable if you’re flexible. After all, our desires change, usually more quickly than we think they will — so long as we are willing to hold them loosely. 

This year, I’m wondering: What if I leaned into this goallessness thing a bit more? What if I even reveled in it? 

And what if you did too?

What if instead of working toward goals, you experimented with happiness instead? What if you went sandboarding for no particular purpose? What if you stopped doing any form of exercise you didn’t actually enjoy? What if you put down every book that didn’t captivate you in the first 23 pages with a loud, evil cackle? What if you let yourself suck at surfing? What if you ate whatever you wanted to, to test that belief of yours that your unchecked appetite is dangerous and insatiable? What if you focused on your own immediate pleasure instead of worrying about keeping some other person happy so they’ll stick around?

Wishing you much happiness in 2023 —

Love,

Siel

Dancing at a Korean restaurant in Mexico City

Three links you might love:

1. You’re not behind. Heather Havrilesky says we should smash our clocks and breathe: “Our job is to luxuriate in the present. Everything good starts there.”

2. You may never reach that goal, so chill the fuck out. Oliver Burkeman recommends a thought experiment: “Whatever it is that you dislike most about yourself—your short temper or your lack of self-discipline—just imagine if that thing was going to be with you in some form ’til the end of your life. What if you were never going to change the thing about you that you so desperately long to change? I think, for a lot of people, that’s quite a liberating thought. What possibilities might open up if you knew that you weren’t going to change that thing?”

3. You need not hustle. An interview with Kate Bowler, a scholar who says most self-help lit sells the same bullshit as the prosperity gospel: “Convincing people that they're invincible, and that all they need to do is harness that energy toward the goal.”

Subscribe | Ask Siel a question | Recommend a book